Scaffolding holding a remnant of the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle, is seen on a rooftop of an abandoned building in the town of Pripyat on January 25, 2006 near Chernobyl, Ukraine. The town of Pripyat, deserted since the 1986 catastrophe, once housed 30,000 people, the majority of being workers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Days after the catastrophe the inhabitants were relocated to other locations in the Soviet Union. The town of Pripyat has remained uninhabited since. Prypyat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous radioactive elements will take up to 900 years to decay sufficiently to render the area safe.

This fascinating photo series looks at the bleak isolation of Chernobyl as never before. Employing infrared filters, photographer Vladimir Mitgutin is able to bring out details of decay – an abandoned bus, a radar system, an amusement park, a doll, a sports hall, a piano – frozen in time. Here: Simon – a friendly fox, who often approaches tourists in the exclusion zone, asking for food. (Photo by Vladimir Mitgutin/Caters News Agency)

A wolf looks into the camera at the 30 km (19 miles) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the abandoned village of Orevichi, Belarus, March 2, 2016. What happens to the environment when humans disappear? Thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, booming populations of wolf, elk and other wildlife in the vast contaminated zone in Belarus and Ukraine provide a clue. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

Journalists walk through the corridor of the stopped third reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine April 20, 2018. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

A containment shelter for the damaged fourth reactor (L) and the New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure (R) at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are seen from Ukraine's abandoned town of Pripyat, Ukraine, April 22, 2016. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

A guard stands at Dityatki checkpoint, marking a 30 km (18-mile) zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant April 23, 2013. Ukraine will mark the 27th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst civil nuclear accident, on April 26. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

A stray puppy walks along abandoned train tracks near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017 near Chornobyl, Ukraine. An estimated 900 stray dogs live in the exclusion zone, many of them likely the descendants of dogs left behind following the mass evacuation of residents in the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A doll in a children's gas mask is seen amongst beds at a kindergarten in the abandoned city of Pripyat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on March 28, 2016. Deadly radiation still spews from Chernobyl 30 years after the worst nuclear meltdown in history, as a newly built giant arch is pulled into place to cover the stricken reactor for the next century. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)